REVEALED: Your Top WRC Driver of the Decade

Just before Christmas, we asked you to vote for your top driver from the past decade of competition in the World Rally Championship - and you voted in your thousands.

The shortlist contained eight world champions and two 'wildcards' - and our only rule was that they had to have won an event in the last ten years to qualify. It will come as no surprise that your top driver was Sebastien Loeb - statistically the best pilot in the history of the WRC, with seven drivers' titles in succession to his name. Loeb was the undisputed number one, with a score of 9.398 out of ten.

Second and third meanwhile was closer, with the late Colin McRae edging out two-time World Rally champion Marcus Gronholm thanks to marks of 8.48 and 8.227 respectively.

Petter Solberg, judged by you and us as the best World Rally driver of 2010 [see separate story – click here], came in fourth, his score of 7.902 put him just ahead of four-time World Rally champion, Tommi Makinen.

Makinen just saw off Carlos Sainz – 7.798 versus 7.651, while Richard Burns, who had his career cruelly cut short by a brain tumour, and who passed away in 2005, was seventh.

Markko Martin, one of our 'wildcards' took eighth - another not to realise his potential after an accident claimed the life of his co-driver, Michael Park, in 2005 on Rally GB. Current BP Ford Abu Dhabi WRT man Mikko Hirvonen and 1994 World Rally champion Didier Auriol, who claimed his final WRC win in 2001, rounded out the top ten.

The full WRC Driver of the Decade results, with each driver's average score out of ten, is as follows:

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I was always a big fan of Colin but come on?
Loeb came to WRC, finished 2nd in his first full season and won every championship in the 7 years since. In that time he has started 100 WRC events, won 58 of them, finished on the podium in 84 of them.
And of course he won in 2006 despite missing a quarter of the season with injury. You just can't argue with a record like that.
Not sure how much longer it will carry on though? After 7 on the trot anyone's motivation must start to suffer and the other Seb in the other Citroen is going to be knocking on the door.
Oli